By Taylor Sisk
Staff Writer
The playground is in many respects a microcosm of the real world. There are rules to be observed and hierarchies to reckon; infrastructure (bats and balls and slides and swings) is required.
It was on such grounds that Michelle Cotton Laws became an activist.
Born in Chapel Hill to a young, single mother who was sent north by her family to college, Laws was raised by her grandmother, Annie Freeman (later Annie Freeman Peay), in Pritchard Avenue Extension public housing.
Ms. Annie was one of a group of women, including Mildred Pierce and Carrie Farrington, who served on the public-housing residence council. “These women were fierce,†Laws admiringly recalls, in seeking justice.
Young Michelle was totted along to meetings, one of which involved playground equipment.
“The merry-go-round was wobbly, the sliding board was coming loose and all this stuff,†Laws says. “So I got up and made an appeal. I was, like, in the fourth grade. And I made an appeal about how we too in the public-housing communities deserved good playground equipment.
“I do remember them being so proud of me. And that was when I first got recognition from the community. I remember Miss Carrie telling my grandma, ‘That child can talk. She sure can talk.’ They just loved to hear me talk.â€
“So I decided then that anytime times would come where I could speak on behalf of our community, I would.â€
And she has.
mmunity leader and the first female president of the Chapel Hill-Carrboro chapter of the NAACP. The fierce desire for social justice that was nurtured on that playground led her, as a UNC student, to hone her chops at the forefront of the drive to establish a freestanding black cultural center on campus.
She’s been a resolute advocate for the civil rights of university employees and recently has spoken on behalf of Kerry Bigelow and Clyde Clark, public works’ employees fired by the Town of Chapel Hill, and against perceived resegregation of the Wake County schools.
Along the way, she’s learned that though the wheels of justice may move slowly, they do in fact budge.
“As Dr. King has said, the moral arc of the universe indeed is long, but it always bends back toward justice. I have to believe that. I do believe that.â€
Beyond race
Michelle Laws’ work is about “pushing back†against what she calls the three greatest ills: ignorance, racism and poverty.
“It’s about fighting against those evils, and the way in which they manifest themselves. We have a duty to treat everybody like everybody else. I’ve been blessed to come a long way from public housing, and I believe that to whom much is given much is also required. â€
Laws earned an undergrad degree from UNC in mass communications and a master’s in sociology from N.C. Central. She worked in Washington, D.C. for the National Crime Prevention Council, was legislative liaison for the state Division of Mental Health, Developmental Disabilities and Substance Abuse Services and now teaches sociology at Central.
She cites a number of mentors, black and white –- among them, lifelong community leader Rebecca Clark; her grandmother; her great-grandmother, Annie Cotton; Valerie Foushee, now an Orange County commissioner; and Al Baldwin, a sociology teacher at Chapel Hill High School.
“I know that my path was opened in a very different way,†she says, “and I believe it was to equip me to fight for others. I don’t take that lightly…. It’s a fight for human dignity and human rights.â€
It’s a fight, Laws says, that transcends race:
“Right now, I think it’s more of a class struggle, though certainly there’s this intersectionality of race and class that we can’t disentangle.
“I have trouble convincing well-to-do, affluent black folks that they need to be a part of the struggle. I have [black] people who will look at me as if I’m absolutely crazy when I talk about the agenda of the NAACP and why it’s so important to fight for education, to continue to fight for fair and affordable housing, for us to continue to fight for jobs.
“You really want to get me mad? Put me in front of what I call ‘bourg-y,’†as in bourgeois, “black folk …â€
But the journey brings its rewards. Laws speaks of the long struggle for environmental justice in the Rogers Road community, where her grandmother eventually moved and her great-grandmother lived until passing away at 103.
As community members fought to keep a solid-waste transfer station out of their neighborhood, arguing that, after nearly four decades of proximity to the county landfill, they’d carried a sufficient burden for the greater community, Laws spoke before the county commissioners of a “foul odor that smells of racism and classism.â€
“The tenacity and the determination to stick with what you know is right, after defeat, after defeat, after defeat,†she says, “that battle, in a lot of ways, gives me hope that eventually things do indeed turn out in favor of those who are fighting for what’s right and just.â€
But, she adds, the battle was also sad to experience.
“It was sad because most of those residents out there were service workers. They worked for families, they worked for the town, they worked for the university as housekeepers and so forth.†Despite their service, they were abandoned, she feels, in their struggle for fundamental amenities.
‘No shame in losing’
As president of the local chapter of the NAACP and champion of the disenfranchised, Laws sees education as the first priority: investing wisely in public schools, closing the achievement gap and assuring affordable access to colleges and universities. Economic disparity is of equal concern.
Though not by any means anti-capitalist – she points out that her husband, Quintin Laws, comes from a long line of entrepreneurs – Laws laments “this uncontrollable greed on Wall Street, people going uncensored, unaccountable, and acting like it’s an entitlement.â€
Meanwhile, “the unemployment rate in the African-American community is in double digits; it’s awful. Then you disaggregate that even more, and you look at black males …â€
Effecting real change will take true courage, Laws says. “We haven’t seen it in our president. It takes courage to say that I’m going to push back because it’s not right.†On the pressure put on President Obama to extend tax cuts, for example: “‘I dare you. I dare you.’ That’s what I was hoping he was going to say. Courage.â€
Of the future, she says, “I’m hopeful; I’m hopeful. I don’t know if optimism is warranted at this point. But my faith requires that I be hopeful.â€
Her greatest joy, Laws says, is “when I’m part of a movement where there’s such great diversity, and people are coming together in this human spirit, and saying, ‘Doggone it, we may go down like the Titanic, but we’re going to fight.’
“I’d almost rather be on that ship, going down like the Titanic, with people fighting for human rights and social justice, than to be on the other side with the people that we’re fighting against.
“There’s no shame in losing, only in not fighting.â€
That fight, Laws says, is in her DNA.
“I don’t know anything but that.
“I still believe in the good in mankind and that if you keep reminding people of that, you keep insisting that that’s indeed the standard – that it’s not an exception; that’s the standard – then eventually that moral arc will bend back.â€
And though the merry-go-round may wobble, a solid shoulder, a sound voice, will right it.